Balm For A Bruise
by tasukichiriko
Summary: When Kyoko gets injured performing her own stunts, Ren is there to look after her.


Groaning, Kyoko rubbed at her shoulder and yawned as she left her dressing room. "Thanks, everyone!" she said with an enthusiasm that she didn't feel and, if she were honest, hadn't felt since getting her first bruise during filming. What had made her decide to do this drama in the first place? The director hadn't wanted her even if the studio president had, _Sho_ had contributed the theme song and a few insert songs, and she had to do her own stunts.

Tsuruga Ren joined her in the hallway. "Are you still sore?"

Kyoko's eyes went wide. This. This was her reason for taking on the role, though damn that being honest with herself. Her heart beat faster as his shoulder rubbed against her own. "Just... just a little!" She clutched her shoulder harder and winced as her fingernails dug into her flesh atop a bruise gained from launching herself over the teacher's desk in one of the first battle sequences.

His fingers dug beneath her own and loosened her grip so that her hand slid down her front where she caught it on the strap of her bag. "Are you using the muscle rub I gave you?" He raised one eyebrow and she swallowed at the lump that seemed to have formed in her throat.

"Where I can," she muttered, and regretted it almost immediately as he took one step with those impossibly long legs and got in front of her, his wide shoulders and a rack of costumes blocking the hallway and preventing her from moving forward. She took a step back, but found her muscles unwilling to move much further. She hissed out a breath as her back spasmed.

"Come on," Tsuruga said and grabbed her hand, pulling her swiftly along with him into an empty dressing room. He closed the door behind them and leaned against it and looked at her with a gleam in his eye and said, "Strip."

Kyoko clutched at her bag and forced herself backward until her legs were pressed against the low makeup bench. "Wh- what?"

He shook his head. "You've got the muscle rub in your bag, right?"

"Oh!" It took her a moment of fumbling, but she found the tube and held it up.

Tsuruga snatched it from her hand and leaned closer to her. "Where do you need it that you can't get it yourself?"

Kyoko shivered. Something about the way he'd said that, the words husky and whispered against her ear, made the words sound so _dirty_. She shook off the feeling and smiled. "It's mostly my shoulder," she said and began to slide off her bag and jacket.

Almost immediately, his hands were helping her to pull off the sleeve and ease off the rest of the jacket. She moved on to the buttons on her shirt and let out a pained squeak as her back protested the movement. He swatted her hands off to the side and then his knuckles were brushing against her collarbone and pulling her tiny plastic buttons through the stitched-up buttonholes and peeling the sides of her shirt away to reveal her camisole.

"Tsuruga-" Kyoko said softly and tried to make herself continue to breathe and keep her arms at her sides and not faint and all of those other things that _normal_ people did in these kinds of situations.

When her shirt had been completely undone, his long fingers slid beneath it, skimming along the tops of her shoulders, and pushed it down her arms. There was a draft in the room. She wouldn't have realized it otherwise, but now that tiny wisp of air slid against her spine and she shivered. He laughed, just a low noise in his throat, and it seemed to reverbate through the air. "That's a pretty nasty bruise," he said.

She glanced up at his face from where she'd been focusing intently on a discolored spot on the floor. Following his line of sight, she looked at the mottled purple of her skin and tried to quell the tiny wave of nausea that hit her in rememberence of the pain that had moved through her upon acquiring said bruise. "It is, isn't it?"

"Did you get it looked at by anyone on set?" He opened the muscle rub and squeezed a dollop onto his fingers.

She looked away again. "No. I didn't think it would be this bad. My costume hides it, too, so-" She gasped as he placed his hand against her shoulderblade and began to rub the cool cream into her flesh. It heated up quickly under his ministrations and Kyoko focused even harder on the spot on the floor.

"You need to take care of yourself," he said and she laughed before she could think through the action. "What's so funny?"

"You're the last person to get to lecture anyone about taking care of yourself," she said as Tsuruga's hands ventured further. He was careful with her bruised flesh, smoothing the pads of his fingers along it without pressing in too far, yet still doing more than the balm alone. She shivered again and tried to blame it on the draft, but Tsuruga's body was nearly pressed against her back now.

His hair brushed against her ear as he leaned forward and whispered, "I have people who look after me from time to time. But it seems that it's fallen to me to look after you. That hardly seems fair, does it?" The thin strap of her camisole slid down her shoulder, brushed aside as easily as her early resolve to never fall for anyone again after Sho, even though she knew, _knew_, that her feelings for Tsuruga were not of the uncomplicated friendship variety that she had so long tried to convince herself existed.

"We look after each other," she said finally as his palm slid off of her skin and he settled her camisole strap back into place.

"We do, don't we?" He lifted the hand that dangled almost bonelessly beside her, and eased it through her sleeve calmly. He repeated the action on the other side as though he were dressing a rag doll and she focused on the gentle hum of the fluorescent light above her and her own heartbeat instead of on the methodical and insistent press of his fingers against her bare flesh as he buttoned her back up and set her to rights.

He held up her jacket. "Will you be needing help getting this on, too?"

She snatched it from his hands and clutched it under her arm. "I think I'll be fine without it," she said and reached for her bag that he was holding.

Tsuruga put her bag over his own shoulder and then wrapped his other arm around her. "It's a little cold, though."

"What do you think you're doing?!"

"Looking after you," he said with a grin and a glint of light in his eyes. Her heart beat even faster and she wondered if this was normal, to have palpatations from normal conversation, or if she should see the set doctor after all.


End file.
